MATH 1711: WEEK 6

Topics for this week are:

• Probability Distributions
• The Binomial Probability
• Expected Value

Objectives for this week:

• Create and interpret probability distributions and histograms
• Identify binomial trials and calculate their probabilities
• Find and interpret the expected values of probability distributions

Text coverage:     Sections 7.1 - 7.3 of Goldstein, Schneider and Siegel. And the notes on the exponential function included here.

Online resources:

• Week 6 Formula Sheet
• Week 6 Practice Problems
• Online notes
  • A project on operations research and expected value. Probabilities and expected value are essential to the field of operations research. In this example, imagine yourself as the operator of a small business (a beach umbrella renter). How do you determine your expected profit? And, how many umbrellas should you have ready to rent in order to maximize your profit? In other words, we seek the optimum number of beach umbrellas.
• Maple worksheets
  • A Maple worksheet on statistics, including frequency distributions, cumulative frequency distributions, and histograms.  This worksheet also explores Maple commands for measures of centrality and dispersion.
  • A Maple worksheet on the binomial distribution and histograms.  In this worksheet, we explore how Maple can generate the probability distributions and histograms of binomial trials.

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Last Modified: . School of Mathematics, Georgia Institute of Technology.